The Not So Perfect Side of Party Planning

I love planning parties for my kids, but it never goes as planned.

My son recently turned 16, so I decided to throw him a dive-in movie sweet 16 birthday party. The plan was to have a retro movie themed party with a movie by the pool, so the teenagers could float and enjoy the show.

I spent months planning and organizing this party for him and his friends.

I had the whole party planned out in my head and I had hoped that everything would work out smoothly.

Well, you would think I would have learned after so many years of planning parties, things don’t always go as planned.

Pictures always make everything look so perfect, so I have decided to share my dive-in birthday party, with the not so perfect moments.

You Can’t Control the Weather

When planning an outdoor party, you are faced with the challenge of not knowing what the weather will bring upon you.

The sun was shining, and there was no chance of rain, but the wind decided to blow at gulf speeds.

I decided to use foam mounting strips to hold everything down, tablecloths, decorations and etc.

The movie screen was a bit more difficult to hold down. The screen was falling and blowing in the wind, but we made do with zip ties.

Oh and the balloons, the balloons I spent so much time blowing up, never even made it to the party. I had planned on having the walkway to our pool lined with a ton of balloons, some of which were light up balloons, but the wind had other plans for the balloons. Most of the bunches of balloons I filled with helium, never made it out of the house. 🤦‍♀️

Then, we had the Texas heat too deal with. It may have only been 98 degrees but it felt like 110 degrees.

I like to have everything set up before the party starts, but because of the wind and heat, I had to hold off on setting up the candy and cake. So, that threw me off my schedule, but I had to suck it up and move on with the party. 🤦‍♀️

You Always Need More Seating

So, after the party started, we had a little more guests than planned. Of course, I did not have enough chairs, so people were left standing while they ate. 🤦‍♀️

So, as someone with anxiety, I freaked out. I started anxiously searching for more chairs, which made me miss out on mingling with the guests.

Teenagers Will Be Teenagers

So, after frantically searching for chairs, I decided to get back to the party.

I then found out that some of the boys were using foul language in the pool with smaller children present.

I may have lost my cool a little bit and threatened to cancel the party if there was anymore cussing. 🤦‍♀️

Then, after you lose your cool, you have to move ahead with the party. By then, some people had already left the party, leaving me with enormous guilt for letting my temper get the best of me.

As we are getting ready to cut the cake and the teens are exiting the pool, I notice none of them have towels.

My son was in charge of inviting his friends from school, but he neglected to tell them it was a swim party. Some of the boys were literally swimming in their blue jeans. 🤦‍♀️

Needless to say, every single one of my beach towels were used that day and had to be washed. 🤦‍♀️

Everything That Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong

I spent hours making a sideshow for my son, with his sixteen years of pictures. I had music saved to go with the slideshow as well.

We had planned on having it set to the outdoor TV, to play while the guest ate their food.

So, that didn’t go as planned. The music would not work and I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to fix it. 🤦‍♀️

Everyone did get to enjoy the slide show, just without the music I had planned.

Then, we get to the main event of the birthday party, the movie by the pool.

First, we did not plan how we were renting the movie. We had to get a tech savvy guest to help us rent “The Meg“. That took about an hour, half the guests have left by now.

We finally get the movie going, we get in the pool to float and watch the shark movie, but I forgot to charge the laptop that was playing the movie. 🤦‍♀️

The movie was cut short, and needless to say, the party was over.

At the end of the day, my son said he had a great sixteenth birthday and he didn’t even care that it was not perfect.

I didn’t get to take that many pictures of my son and his friends, because of stressing and worrying about everything being perfect. Instead, I should have sat back and relaxed and enjoyed my son’s sixteenth birthday.

We get so caught up in everything being just the way we planned it, we forget to just enjoy the moment. These kids don’t care about perfection. My son would rather I be calm and collective, then a raging maniac trying to make everything go the way I planned it in my head.

Don’t let pictures deceive you, I’m sure there are stories just like mine to go with all those beautiful pictures.

Enjoy the little things in life and just let all that perfect non sense go.

Leave me a comment if you want to learn more about the dive-in movie.